Tears sprang to Amy's eyes once again as she confronted the feelings that had lain dormant inside her for so long. Her vision swam as thought after thought relentlessly bombarded her.

Am I gay for Sally? Oh, Chaos, do I tell her? What would I even say?

She suddenly realized she had been holding her breath and quickly pulled her hands away from her face as she gasped out a shaky sob, finally releasing the floodgates of her anxious fear.

She held onto herself tight enough to bruise her arms as she cried. She felt a sickening dread rise up from her stomach as the same question kept coming back to her mind.

Do I tell Sally?

Sally was one of Amy's best friends. She had told Sally everything- no matter how embarrassing. She had always entrusted the princess with all her secrets, but now she wasn't so sure she could bring herself to tell her this secret.

The uncertainty of how she would react was what made Amy give pause. If she told Sally she was gay, it was one thing. But if she told Sally she was gay and in love with her, it was an entirely different matter. She wanted Sally romantically, but she didn't want to lose her as a friend if her confession took a turn for the worse.

Amy sighed heavily and wiped at her eyes again, sniffling as she stood up from her bed to walk into the bathroom. She stood over her sink and turned it on to splash her face with cold water. She glanced at herself in the mirror- red eyed and blotchy tear-stained cheeks.

"Ugh, I need to pull myself together," she mumbled to her reflection, closing her eyes as she threw water into her face, sighing as it hit her hot skin. She turned off the water and perched herself on the edge of her bathtub, hunched forward as she tried to shift through and gather her thoughts.

Her head and her heart ached from all the crying she had done that day. She knew from experience she wouldn't be able to come up with any good plans in her current state. She needed to relax before deciding on a battle strategy.

She stood up and turned the tub faucets on, pulling away to strip as she waited for it to fill. It didn't take long for the bathroom to fill with steam as water filled the bathtub.

When it was ready, Amy lowered her body into the warm water. With a long, weary sigh, she let herself sink into it up to her nose.

A hot bath will clear my head, she thought as she closed her eyes, letting her head fall under the water as she relaxed into the bath.

With her body wrapped in a towel, Amy exited the bathroom, carrying her dirty laundry over to her hamper. She dried herself off and pulled on some pajamas, taking the towel and using it to dry her quills.

Although she felt a little better than before her bath, she still couldn't shake her uneasiness about the whole predicament. She sighed and tossed her damp towel into her laundry hamper before she climbed back into bed, pulling the covers over her.

She stared up at the ceiling as she started to think about her plan again. Every scenario she came up with all hit a dead end one way or another at the point where she told Sally she was in love with her; one plan after the other was scrapped and Amy started on a different one.

Eventually, sleep overtook her- but she found no rest in her dreams.

Amy was sitting atop a hill overlooking Knothole in the sunshine of a perfect summer's day. It was warm and bright. Amy could feel the gentle breeze on her face and in her quills as she sat atop the hill watching clouds drift by.

She heard a voice call her name and she turned to see who it came from. Looking over her shoulder, she smiled when she saw Sally climbing the hill to join her. Seeing the princess' smiling face sent her heart soaring.

With a sudden gust of wind, the sky grew dark and a thunderstorm with large, black clouds full of lightning rolled in. The wind whipped at Amy's face as rain began to pour from the angry clouds overhead. She turned back towards Sally, crying out to tell her to turn back, only to see her running back to Knothole without her. Amy tried to follow her but as she took a step, her foot sank deep into the muddy ground beneath her as the storm only grew in intensity.

The rain came down in blinding sheets and the ground was turning into a muddy cesspool beneath Amy's feet; the thunder was deafening and the lightning blinding as it stuck nearby trees causing them to catch fire despite the rain. She was left to fend for herself in the storm, and she was growing desperate as she tried to claw her way back onto solid ground. Every movement made her sink further and further into the cold sludge- soon, she sank up to her ears in it. With one last, desperate scream to the storming sky, her head disappeared into the confines of the muddy earth and she was swallowed whole by the suffocating void beneath.

Amy sat up in bed with a start as she gasped for air, clawing at her chest as she reeled from her nightmare. She sat, panting, as she waited for the last remaining threads of her dream to fade away from her, looking around her room in the dim light of dawn that peaked in from behind her curtained windows.

The adrenaline rush from her night terror slowly dissipated, but she was still left with the deep lurking fear that had attacked her in her sleep.

Maybe it wasn't just a dream, Amy thought as she pulled her knees up to her chest, hugging herself tightly.

She knew what it meant- and she knew what to do.